


The Divide

by orphan_account



Series: Omega Captain America [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alpha Bucky Barnes, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Captain America: The Winter Soldier Spoilers, M/M, Multi, Omega Steve Rogers, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Sexism, the Howling Commandos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-16
Updated: 2014-08-16
Packaged: 2018-02-13 11:04:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2148324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Steven Grant Rogers was born an omega."       </p>
<p>In an A/B/O universe, Steve Rogers doesn't grow up to be the perfect omega. He is in love with the perfect alpha. But rather than say anything, he tries to protect him. </p>
<p>OR</p>
<p>How an omega Captain America came to exist.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Divide

Steven Grant Rogers was born an omega.

He never told anyone, because they already knew. He looked like an omega, of course he did. He had pretty eyes and pretty lips, and tiny little limbs that his Mama's friends said would make some alpha real happy, one day. He wore pretty little dresses, a little frayed, a little worn, but pretty all the same. Mama would always be workin', so her school friends, whose husbands were well, and alive, who didn't have to work a factory job, would take him, and watch as he and their pretty little omega children would play together. He was a little smaller than them, but nothing that he wouldn't grow into.

His Mama works. She works long hours, and comes home smelling like dirty factories, and slowly and steadily, gets sicker. She gets paler, thinner, tires more easily. Her school friends stop coming over, and he stops playing with other pretty omegas. He grows up a little, and he doesn't grow into anything. Mama stops working as much, and he gets skinnier with her. His dresses get rips and tears, and Mama pricks her fingers trying to fix them. And eventually, his dresses start falling apart, just like Mama, and she's shaky, but she leaves him alone, one day, and comes back with clothes that no mother would let her omega be caught dead in. Pants. Jacket. He puts them on anyway. Mama cuts his hair real short, and hands him a bottle, full of some clear liquid. She dabs it on his neck, under his arms, with shaky fingers. Afterwards she has to lie down, and she lets him get on the bed with her.

"Stevie," she says, as she presses her still shaky fingers to his head, "I'm going back to God, baby." He's a little too young to understand exactly what she means, but he nods anyways. "And I need you to promise me something, baby." He clings to her, almost the way he always has, only a little gentler. 

"Anythin', Mama." She smiles at him, a real smile, that reaches her eyes. 

"One day, people will care whether or not you're an omega. And I want you to get married, to have a nice alpha," and he doesn't make a face, but just barely, because alphas are mean, and when his hair was a little longer, they used to tug on it, "but until you get bigger, until you're not sick, you tell people you're a beta. You understand me, Stevie?" 

He isn't sure why his Mama is tellin' him to lie to people, but he's six, now, and Mama told him that little white fibs are okay, if they don't hurt nobody. God doesn't mind it if you fib a little.

"Yes, Mama." She smiles at him, and he hugs her, careful not to squeeze too hard. She presses a kiss to his head, and whispers, "Mama loves you, baby. No matter what, Stevie, remember that Mama loves you." He nods, and he thinks the steady beat of his Mama's heart might be slowin' down.

Later, when they take his Mama away, when her heart doesn't beat anymore, he cries, and a nun, like the ones from church, hands him a handkerchief, and asks him what his name is. His voice is scratchy and quiet when he says, "Steven." 

She tells him that "God will provide," and wraps a blanket around his skinny shoulders. She calls herself Sister Agnes, and when she brings him back to the orphanage, she tells him to be a good boy. He tries to listen, as best he can.

He prays, he does his schoolwork, and he does all his chores perfectly. He doesn't have friends, but sometimes, Sister Agnes lets him sit by her, and she reads him stories out of the bible.

Then, he starts getting sick. He's sick a lot, and Sister Agnes comes to sit by him in the infirmary. She teaches him what the other kids learned that day, and he doesn't fall too far behind. When he isn't sick, though, the other kids have started to make fun of him. He doesn't really care. But when they start pickin' on other kids like him, who're too skinny, too sickly, too afraid to stick up for themselves, he wants to do something about it. So he talks back to the bigger kids, takes beatings for other kids, and ends up in the infirmary, not just because he's sick, but because he has a black eye, or a broken nose. And that's how he meets Bucky.

He's getting the tar beat out of him again, by Jimmy Stokes. Jimmy was a lot bigger than him, had been a lot bigger than Tommy was, too. But Tommy wouldn't stick up for himself, so Steve stood up to him instead. And he's pretty sure that Jimmy is gonna end up breaking his jaw, until a boy that's even taller than Jimmy, who's an alpha, a big alpha, comes along, and clocks him on the jaw. Jimmy goes sprawling, and this new alpha offers Steve his hand. "Y'know, you coulda just stayed out of it. That kid ain't gonna be grateful, or anythin'." 

"Somebody had to tell him he was wrong." He stares at him for a minute, before he sticks his hand out again.

"I'm Bucky."

He takes it.

"Steve." Bucky grins at him, and when he lets go of his hand, he knocks shoulders with him.

"Guess somebody's gotta keep you from gettin' yourself killed, huh?"

"Jerk." He tries punchin' him in the arm, but it kinda hurts his hand.

Bucky just keeps grinnin'. "Punk."

\--

Steve Rogers is a beta. Of course he's a beta. He sleeps in the beta wing of the orphanage, he wears beta clothes, smells like a beta, talks pike a beta, walks like a beta, is a beta. He drills that into his head every day after puberty. Because who the hell would want some skinny, scrawny omega like him? Omegas should be healthy, and pretty, and shouldn't have the muscles of a popsicle stick. Steve looks like havin' a baby would split him right down the middle. 

Besides, it's not like anyone cares, anyways. He's only got Bucky, and Bucky goes with some of the best lookin' omegas in New York. The idea that Bucky would ever want an omega like him isn't just laughable, it's painfully laughable. So he doesn't think about it. He pretends to be a beta, and he focuses on better things. Like stickin' up for people, and steadfastly ignoring Bucky's stream of constant omegas. He smiles, he laughs, and he's happy. 

He keeps on bein' happy until the war starts. And then he wants to believe that he's a beta. Because he wants to fight for his country, wants to fight for Bucky. So he tries to enlist. And tries again. And again. And here he is, sitting here, pretending to be from Paramas (he's never been outside of New York City in his life, but then again, he's spent his whole life pretending to be a different gender, so a different city is no sweat), trying to enlist again. 

The doctor stamps him 4F, and, rejected enlistment forms in his back pocket, he goes to see a picture. When the guy in front of him starts shouting, he braces himself for another alleyway. He has to say that falling on trash cans is really uncomfortable. Not as uncomfortable, say, as the pang in his heart when Bucky comes to rescue him again (beta, beta, beta, beta, beta), but uncomfortable none the less. And not nearly as painful as Bucky being shiped off to England (beta, beta, beta,).

And then Bucky is trying to set him up, again, with some pretty beta girl who is supremely unimpressed with him (and he really can't blame her). There's an enlistment center, and even though Bucky doesn't want him to, he tries again. When the doctor leaves the room, though, he's terrified. Maybe they realized he's falsified his enlistment forms, or that he's an omega, god forbid. 

Doctor Erskine doesn't know. He can't, because he stamps 1A on his form, and ships him off to base camp. He doesn't get to see Bucky before both of them leave, and he's terrified that something is going to happen to him. But he clamps down on his fear, because a male beta worrying that much about an alpha goes beyond the realm of friendliness, and he's already an outcast in a camp full of obscenely muscular alphas, without them thinking that he's a skinny, weak beta and a homosexual. Hodge might actually kill him.

So he trains (as best he can), and tries not to focus on just how scrawny he is, standing there in his uniform. But he has something that they don't, and that's brains. He manages to not die during the run by using them. He has to say, though, that his lack of an omegan figure makes it a lot easier to bunk with alphas.

\---

He's never been very good at talking to beta women, or to omegas. That was always okay. He doesn't need to be able to talk to them. But Agent Carter, he can talk to her. He feels bad for pretending, though. Because he knows exactly what she means, but he managed to make it all the way.

The procedure is immensely painful. But he makes it through. And if his chest is a little bit softer than they expected it to be, they ignore it. Possibly because Phillips only gets about ten seconds to look at him before a Hydra spy kills Doctor Erskine. 

He doesn't get to look at himself, until later. When he does, he's kind of amazed. Taller, and more muscular than most omegas, he looks more like one than he ever has. He wants to wear a dress, wants to dress like an omega again, for the first time in fifteen years. And then it occurs to him, that for the first time, ever, his heats will be strong enough to actually affect an alpha, will be more than an uncomfortable ache and a fever. He steadfastly does not think about Bucky.

\----

Captain America is an alpha. Of course Captain America is an alpha. He can lift a motocycle with three omegas on it straight over his head. No beta (because an omega would definitely not be in the army, oh no), could ever be that strong. 

Captain America is a national icon. Steve Rogers is an omega playing dress up. He gets tomatoes thrown at him, and ends up sitting in the rain, drawing, until Peggy shows up. And then, all he can think about is getting the troops (Bucky, Bucky, Bucky, Bucky) back.

Which is how he ends up jumping off a plane while Howard Stark hits on one of his only friends. Which is also how he ends up punching Hydra agents, sneaking into a top secret base in Austria, and rescuing most of the 107th.

And then he focuses on finding Bucky.


End file.
